The Dance of Time

That took little time. Most of the population had fled already, taking their most valuable possessions with them. After his army had crossed the Jhelum and entered the land between that river and the Chenab, the Persians considered themselves in enemy territory. By the terms of the agreement Khusrau had made with the Romans and the new Malwa emperor, after the war this would become Malwa territory. So, they were destroying everything, driving the population south toward Multan, where they'd join a horde of refugees already overburdening the Malwa garrison there.

In an sense, they'd been in enemy territory also, west of the Jhelum, but those lands were destined to become part of the Persian empire, by the provisions of the agreement. So, Khusrau had kept his soldiers under tight discipline, and had refrained from any destruction except where enemy forces put up resistance.

There hadn't been much of that. Apparently, the Malwa commander of the main army in the Punjab had been withdrawing all his detachments in the north in order to reinforce the Malwa lines facing the Romans. Lord Samudra, as he was named, was adopting a completely defensive posture while the Persians and the Kushans invaded the northern Punjab with impunity. For all practical purposes, the Malwa empire's largest and most powerful army had become paralyzed on its western border, while Damodara and Belisarius and Kungas and Khusrau himself drove lances into its unprotected guts.

Khusrau thought Samudra was an idiot. Knew him to be an idiot, rather, since the Persian emperor was well aware that Maurice had no more than fifty thousand Roman troops in the Iron Triangle. Sixty thousand, perhaps, counting the various auxiliary units that were assigned to maintaining the critical supply lines from the Sind. But even including those soldiers, Maurice was still outnumbered well over two-to-one. Probably closer to three-to-one.

With fifty thousand men behind those formidable Roman defensive works, of course, Maurice could hold his own against Samudra. But only on the defensive—and the same was true the other way. Samudra could have easily taken over half his army north to put a stop to Khusrau's expedition and, possibly, even cut off the Kushan army. Depending on where Kungas had taken it, of course. Khusrau suspected the Kushans were already into the Gangetic Plain. If they were able to join forces with Belisarius...

But while the Malwa commander in the Punjab seemed capable enough, when it came to routine matters, Samudra obviously had not an ounce of initiative and daring. The Malwa regime was not one that fostered independent thinking on the part of its commanders.

Hard to blame them, really. The one great exception to that rule was probably even now battering at the gates of Kausambi.

* * *

Damodara was not battering at the gates, as it happened. But he was bringing the siege guns into position to do so.

"Yes, yes, Ajatasutra, I know we hope to enter the city through... ah, what would you call it? 'Treachery' seems inappropriate."

"Guile and stratagem, Your Majesty," Ajatasutra supplied.

Damodara smiled. "Splendid terms. On my side, anyway."

The new emperor glanced at Narses. The Roman spymaster was perched on the mule he favored, studying the fortifications on the western walls of Kausambi.

It was a knowing sort of examination, not the vacant stare that most imperial courtiers would have given such a purely military matter. Damodara had realized long since that Narses was as shrewd with regard to military affairs as he was with all others. Despite his age, and the fact that he was eunuch, Damodara was quite sure that Narses would make an excellent general himself.

What am I going to do with Narses? he asked himself, not for the first time. If I take the throne, do I dare keep such a man around? It'd be like sharing a sleeping chamber with a cobra.

The solution was obvious, but Damodara felt himself resisting that impulse. Whatever else, Narses had served him well for years. Superbly well, in fact. Had even, most likely, kept his family and that of Rana Sanga alive where they would have been murdered by Malwa otherwise.

It would bode ill, Damodara thought, if he began what amounted to a new dynasty in all but name with an act of treachery.

But what else can I do? The Romans certainly won't take him back. And the Persians and the Axumites and the Kushans know his reputation too well to entertain the thought of employing him, either.

What else is there, but an executioner or an assassin's blade?

Perhaps he could have him poisoned...